


Sing to Me Like the Lights Don't Blind You

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:48:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier doesn't always know who he is, but he's never without the echoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing to Me Like the Lights Don't Blind You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stars_inthe_sky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/gifts).



> Written for #BuckyNat Week over on Tumblr. Prompted by Tumblr user stars-inthe-sky, who said: 
> 
> #buckynat week prompt: "Sing to me like the lights didn't blind you/Like you blinded me, when I heard your voice in a dream "

He walked through negative space and manipulated that dark matter with an even darker sort of learned intent. Sometimes he couldn’t remember his training. Sometimes he could only remember the last kill. If he tried to go back further he found nothing but ghosts and whispers. It didn’t bother him. His function didn’t require him to be complete.

Even when he couldn’t remember his training he didn’t forget his skills. They had been grafted to him, sutured in with bruises and knitting wounds. The most important of them was his ability to alter the way he was perceived by others or, when it was absolutely necessary, make it so he wouldn’t be perceived at all. 

_She shouldn’t have seen him._

It started with the Tarasova job and that small, fragile child on the stripped wood of the front steps. He had been caught by her deep, burning eyes. His job was to not be seen and he’d failed. He couldn’t know how many missions he’d been on since then, but he could pinpoint that as the start of his blurring. Now, after every kill shot, his focus scattered. The ghosts and whispers floated to the surface. 

Their associations came with them. The narrow halls of the red rooms became a ballistics course. Faces he couldn’t remember meeting threw up red flags. This man had once pressed the heel of his boot to the Winter Soldier’s neck. That one had saved his life with a miraculous bending shot. This woman had once pretended to be the daughter of a Russian diplomat. That one…that one sent his hollow mind in a frenzy. Her eyes were cold like all the rest, but her hair red was like forest flames and he knew, he knew that if he brushed against her they would both go up in them. They had before. 

_Her glare bore down on him. His carelessness was going to end in every part of his hide seared like road burn._

Sometimes after they wiped him the needle would skip and drop into a well-worn groove. He would remember that he and this woman had been lovers and something at the core of him ached and pulsed if she didn’t remember too. Sometimes he didn’t remember, but she would look at him in a way that would give credit to the flashes she set off in his mind. Sometimes they both remembered.

Their choreographed collisions happened in secret. It was for their safety, and for the thrill, and for the integrity of the program to which they had sworn their fealty. They loved each other feverishly, but they loved Russia absolutely. They would die for Her state and not for each other. Without speaking, they used sharp nails and etched this pact on each other’s skin. 

_The snap in his mind was practically audible. He had to look down to make sure it wasn’t the sound of him pulling the trigger._

The first time he saw the cryo tubes he was sick across the metal gratings in the floor. Bent over, retching violently, it was the one memory that he knew was always with him. Pallid, naked men and women floated in thick solution in tanks all around him and he realized that they did this to him too. Worse, they did it to her. 

His mission was in Japan. It was to be a quick in and out job, but he’d been told to take three men with him just in case. There was a chance their intelligence was wrong. There was a possible mole that needed to be tested. He wanted to choose her, because she was the best man for the job. But she was also his and now that he knew he was living a life where nothing was his, not really, he felt the selfish, desperate need to keep her. 

It was an off period. She didn’t remember what they were. So she couldn’t hold it against him when he broke his promise. Screw the Russia that’s done this, he thought. He put her first. Two of his men didn’t come back.

_It took him half a second to check the trigger. It took her half a second to use this to her advantage, slip in close, and deliver one kick to his rifle and one to his head._

Once his mind had cataloged that he spent large chunks of time in stasis his dreams in between became lucid. He learned to drag himself to the surface. Not enough that he would wake and gulp the thick, sickly sweet liquid into his lungs, but enough to be able to peep over the roof’s ledge into consciousness. When he became bored with his nightmares he listened. 

A thump to the tank sent a small shock through to him. It pressed across his body like ice pressing onto Russia’s frozen shores inch by excruciating inch and woke him. Voices he knew were discussing him. His general said he was the best man for the job. She said no. It was firm and jagged and she didn’t balk or offer explanation. She just said no, broke their promise. She didn’t come back. 

_"I didn’t save you for this," she said. The small blade bit at the skin near his carotid artery. "I saved you for better than this. I’m sorry."_

_Her eyes burned. Her ragged breath grazed his throat. All of the old ghosts floated to the surface. He couldn’t remember his training, but there was a spark inside of him that remembered her and trusted that she was._


End file.
